But what if your ad is the only thing that displays – with no organic listing? That could cause the user to question the legitimacy of your brand. So ideally, you’d have both.

Both of these tools bring strengths to the table. Why wouldn’t you want both of them working for you?

2. Neither SEO nor PPC Is Free

A common argument against PPC is that it’s expensive. You have to pay every time someone clicks on your ad. And if your accounts are professionally managed, you have to pay for that too.

But as any SEO expert will tell you, SEO also takes time, money and expertise.

If you want it done well, you’re going to have to pay for it – whether you’re paying an in house SEO manager or an outside consulting firm.

3. It’s Not a Zero-Sum Game

Sometimes people make the mistake of thinking that SEO versus PPC is a zero-sum game. If you stop investing in one, the other will pick up the slack and vice versa.

But I’ve rarely seen that happen. SEO and PPC won’t typically cannibalize each other. Instead, they draw their results from different pools.

This is a point we made with a client recently.

The client is working with an SEO agency. This isn’t unusual. In fact, we welcome this arrangement because we know good SEO will help drive PPC results and vice versa.

But in this case, the SEO consultant was encouraging the client to drop PPC entirely in some markets. His was going to pump up his organic efforts in some of our lower performing locations, so advertising would no longer be necessary (he says!).

Let’s see what would happen if our client accepted this recommendation.

In 2018, organic drove 29% of sessions for this client, generating 22% of the leads.